Law Evolution Science and Junk Science

Casey Luskin comes out of the closet

Casey Luskin finally confesses that he is a creationist.

Quacking like a duck, accordign to a famous ID proponent, Luskin can't seem to keep the distinction between Intelligent Design and ID CLASSIC  creationism.

See, Intelligent Design claims to accept common descent.  That's why it's not creationism, according to certian proponents.  But when you reject common descent and common ancestry as Luskin does, well, you're quacking like a creationist.

Casey...go read page 87 of your book.  ID does not challenge evolution, only the method.

Traipsing Into Evolution Book Review

Here's my short version of the book review for Traipsing into Evolution.  A book this bad deserves a detailed review, but for now, here it is.

Losing a court case is like suffering a poker "bad beat."  Nobody really wants to hear your story, and it's considered "whining" if you don't get over it after one beer.  Amazingly, losers comprise more than 50% of all lawsuit participants.  Most go away muttering under their breath about judges who don't understand them.  Some can't get over their legal "bad beat" and write books about their loss.

So say it, so be it.  The Discovery Institute has published its whine after the Dover bad beat. Entitled "Traipsing Into Evolution," it appeals to the court of public opinion.  Appeal denied. This is a wretched book.

The Discovery Institute PR campaign for Intelligent Design bears a laughably strong resemblance to Baghdad Bob, the Iraqi "Information Minister" who claimed there were no Americans in Iraq's capital city as those same Americans pounded up the stairs into his own studio.  His mere statements of fact served as their own proof, no matter how outlandish.  Traipsing continues in this tradition.  None of the factual assertions in this book are to be taken seriously.

The book overlooks a peculiar idiosyncrasy of courts. Unlike Iraq's ministry of Information, courts rely on something called "evidence."  There are two components to that concept.  First, only evidence actually admitted in court "counts."  Out of court, self-serving press releases are not evidence and don't count.  Second, the evidence proffered in court must meet certain minimum requirements.  Witness testimony, for example, must be both under oath and subject to cross-examination.

That means witnesses must answer questions from an attorney who is not sympathetic to the witness's own position.  The witness cannot decline to answer and the witness must tell the truth.  In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered: (1) out of court press releases; (2) proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and (3) some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

The trial judge's opinion detailed ID's lack of evidence and the witness testimonial defects, including the falsehoods, throughout his 139 page decision. Any intellectually honest post-mortem would have addressed these issues head on. If you expect Traipsing to do so, you'll be disappointed.

Traipsing argues that ID is good science and that it is not creationism.  In "Baghdad Bob" fashion, the book only offers Discovery Institute press releases as "evidence" in support of its arguments.  No real evidence is offered and the evidence actually offered in court is not analyzed. The court rejected both propositions based on the evidence actually offered at trial.  As just one example of actual evidence, two Discovery Fellows, Michael Behe and Scott Minnich testified as experts.  Both were asked under oath if ID was science. Both had the choice to answer truthfully or to lie and prevaricate.  To their credit, they answered truthfully. Minnich testified that ID was not science and Behe testified it was as scientific as astrology.  Based on this evidence from ID's own proponents, the judge not surprisingly found that ID was not science. Frankly, the authors distort both the in-court and out of court evidence in their book.

The book makes much of the fact that the judge concluded that there was a lack of peer reviewed literature, apparently overlooking the "vast" ID-favorable literature enclosed in the book as Appendix B.  There are two reasons why the judge did not consider this literature: (1) it was out of court hearsay, not subject to cross examination; and (2) It is not scientific research, it is essentially propaganda. This second point explains why nobody was willing to actually testify in court that such peer reviewed ID-specific scientific research existed.  Nobody was willing to take the perjury rap in court.

If you are interested in what really happened, get it from the horse's mouth. Read the opinion itself and the actual evidence and trial testimony. Both are online.

Apologies to Brittany and Louie

"Oops, I did it again."

Casey Luskin does the very old (older than Brittany) "two gaps instead of one" trick upon evidence of a clear transitional at the Misreporting of Evolution website.

Amazing....I'm surprised it took this long.

The Discovery Institute really needs better lawyers.

The ones they have don’t seem to really know what they’re doing.  A former Discovery Institute lawyer teams up to write an article suggesting that a single Dover school board member had a huge conflict of interest because that newly elected board member was a plaintiff in the Kitzmiller case and obviously such a board member shouldn’t be approving the payment of the attorneys fees to the plaintiffs.

Amazing.  There’s no conflict of interest in such cases.  But, as Panda’s Thumb reports, the board member in question hadn’t even taken office yet.

Oh, oops.  Well, not to let the facts get in the way of a good legal argument, The former Discovery Institute lawyer now argues that the ACLU is in collusion with the NEW school board to cut a sweetheart deal on attorney’s fees.

A review of the timeline reveals how ridiculous this suggestion is.
The trial was over November 4.  The NEW school board was elected November 8, four days after closing arguments. The vast bulk of the attorney’s fees had already been acrued by the time the new board was elected. The case was under submission, awaiting the judge's decision.  Only some minor post-trial motions would have been required after November 4.  The OLD Intelligent Design school board's defense tactics and litigation strategy had already caused the plaintiffs to expend the vast bulk of the fees by November 8, 2005.  The NEW school board had no opportunity to influence these fees at all.

Unfortunately for the defendants, the complaint alleges a violation of 42 USC 1983, the federal Civil Rights Act.  Guess what, 42 USC 1988 provides for attorneys fees to successful plaintiffs in 1983 actions. The OLD school board should have immediately factored in the risk of attorney's fees at least by the time the complaint was filed-- on December 14 2004. 

Remember that date.  The attorneys fees meter turns on as of that date.  The defendants can turn off the meter at any time by entering a consent decree  and settling the case and cutting off accruing attorney’s fees.  But there is no requirement that plaintiffs accept a settlement that doesn’t pay all their attorney fees.  No plaintiffs in their right minds will accept a consent decree without making sure their own lawyers get paid.

The DI lawyers and lawyer wannabees apparently don’t realize that once a party is entitled to attorneys fees they cannot be deprived of that right by a defendant’s decision to simply stop the constitutional infringement.  If the defendant does so the plaintiff still recovers attorneys fees. In fact, it has been long recognized that plaintiff can recover attorneys fees even before the lawsuit as long as the plaintiff’s actions and threatened lawsuit were the “catalyst” for the defendant’s changed conduct.

(The catlyst theory has been limited in some federal actions in Buchhannon Board and Care Home, Inc v. West Virginia Dept of Health.  That case is cold comfort to the defendant shere becuase the court specifically upheld the palitff's entitlement to attorneys' fees for settlements and any other court orders that awarded plaintiffs relief.  The catalyst theory is still available for state causes of actin in many jurisdictions, check yoru local jurisdiction for details.)

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-1848.ZO.html (apples only to federal law) and in limited situations.

Once the action is commenced, therefore the defendant is stuck.  There is no reason for a plaintiff to settle without attorney’s fees being paid. The defendant’s only hope to avoid fees is to win.  Once the court had the case under submission, the board could not avoid exposure to attorneys’ fees.

Therefore, this Discovery Institute statement is false:
“Because the Board members understood that removing the policy could have ended the legal controversy. Without the school board deciding to keep the policy, the same policy that board publicly opposed, the ACLU & AUSCS may not have been able to claim attorneys fees.”

So is this one:
“By rescinding the old board's evolution policy prior to a court ruling, the new board might have curtailed legal costs and fees incurred by a victorious ACLU and AUSCS.”

The whopper of course is this one:”  “A likely forthcoming decision by Judge Jones would overrule both the board and the theory of intelligent design.” Prior to December 20, 2005, who knew how Judge Jones would rule?”

Question: If it was such a slam dunk prior to December 20, 2005, what was the OLD school board doing even defending such a dog of a case?

Now that pounding the facts didn’t work, and pounding the law didn’t work, it’s time to pound the table like this guy.

Another question to the DI lawyers, ex-DI lawyers and DI lawyer wannabees:  You all seem so concerned for the taxpayers of York County.  If your concern for the taxpayers is sincere, what legal theories can you come up with to impose personal liablity on the OLD board members for the plaintiff's legal fees so as to ease the taxpayers burden?  That's a legal project we can all agree on, can't we? Never mind, somebody beat you to it.